Proclaimer Blog
Taking a line in the difficult passages
There are some passages in Scripture which are, frankly, very hard to understand. They just are. And sometimes your understanding of them may lead to very different applications, even opposite ones. Take the crying in Ezra 3. Why are the older leaders crying? Tears of joy perhaps? Tears of sorrow? I think the text is ultimately clear in this place (though why they are crying is more difficult to work out). But your answer may lead you in very different directions.
Ezra 10 is a similar passage. You could tie yourself in a lot of knots trying to get to the bottom of this. So, what do you do with it in a sermon? If you were writing a commentary, you’ve got a much easier task. You can spend 10 pages presenting one view and 10 pages the opposing view. Then you can say “at the end, we can’t really be sure.”
But is that ever good enough for a sermon?
I do think a preacher needs to sit humbly before the text and his people need to see him submitting to the text. But a sermon is not a commentary, nor is it a lecture. Therefore, I believe a preacher should prayerfully and carefully hope and trust to come to a conclusion. That is not to say that he cannot reveal his struggles. ‘This is a hard part to get right.’ Nor ever claim to have the final word. ‘As I’ve prayed and considered, this is where the text seems to take us.’
But he won’t have time to do the whole ‘it could mean this, it could mean that’ rigmarole. Nor should he want to.
That’s not preaching, is it? At least, not in my book.